Modern vehicle seats, particularly those of the so-called “bucket seat” variety, typically have armrest members that are pivotally foldable upwardly from a generally horizontally oriented in-use design configuration to a generally vertically oriented stowed configuration. Such upward pivotal folding of the armrest members to the stowed configuration is useful in facilitating ingress and egress of a vehicle occupant from the vehicle seat itself, and to and from adjacent seats and/or rows of seats within a vehicle. Moreover, such upward pivotal folding of the armrest member facilitates subsequent forward folding of the backrest member of the seat over the seat cushion member to allow, for example, the backrest member to be forwardly folded to, for example, a substantially horizontally disposed load floor configuration, as is commonly desirable in sport utility vehicles and mini-vans, without interference of the armrest members with the seat cushion members or other components of the vehicle.
In this regard, and more generally in regard to vehicle seats intended for use in smaller, more compact vehicles, there is a need for an armrest adjustment mechanism that reduces the width of the backrest/armrest assembly when the armrest member is in its raised stowed configuration. This general need to reduce the width of vehicle seats having armrests in the stowed configuration must be balanced with the additional need to provide vehicle seats with armrests that are spaced laterally sufficiently far apart so as to be comfortable in the deployed design configuration.
Known vehicle seats having armrests provide only for the pivotal rotation of such armrest members about a lateral seat axis, without providing for significant lateral displacement of the armrest members therealong during such pivotal rotation. In view of this shortcoming in the prior art, and in order to provide a comfortably wide deployment of the armrest members in use whilst providing a compact stowed configuration, there exists a clear need for an armrest adjustment mechanism that provides for controlled rotation of the armrest member between the deployed design configuration and the raised stowed configuration, whilst concurrently providing for positive inward lateral displacement of the armrest member on rotation from the deployed design configuration towards the raised stowed configuration. Such mechanism must be simple and inexpensive to manufacture and to assemble on a vehicle seat.